Eight Legged Freaks

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Eight Legged Freaks
Directed by Ellory Elkayem
Produced by Bruce Berman
Dean Devlin
Written by Jesse Alexander
Ellory Elkayem
Starring David Arquette
Kari Wührer
Scarlett Johansson
Doug E. Doug
Music by John Ottman
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s) July 17, 2002
Running time 100 mins
Language English
Budget $30,000,000 (estimated)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Eight Legged Freaks is a 2002 horror/comedy film directed by Ellory Elkayem and stars David Arquette, Kari Wührer, Scarlett Johansson and Doug E. Doug. The plot concerns a collection of spiders that are exposed to nuclear waste, causing them to swell grow to gigantic proportions.

Taglines:

  • Poster: Let the squashing begin!
  • Trailer: Do you hate spiders? Do you really hate spiders? They don't like you much either!

Contents

[edit] Plot

In the quiet mining town of Prosperity, Arizona, an exhausted trucker carrying a cargo of toxic waste swerves off the road to avoid killing a rabbit, loosening one of the barrels, which rolls down the sandy slopes and into a swamp where a small population of insects live. Nobody notices this and the toxins begin polluting the pond and the surrounding area. By next week, an exotic spider collector named Joshua has been making regular visits to the site, where he collects crickets for his spiders. Although the bugs have ingested the toxins, he is oblivious since the insects seem unaffected.

Days later, a young boy named Mike Parker is riding on his bicycle down to the man's spider collection store to visit Joshua. Joshua is excited to show him how much larger his spiders have grown, and declares that he finally received his newest spiders from Brazil: an enormous female Orb Weaver named Consuela and around a dozen males, who bring live food to Consuela to earn her trust and the right to mate. After Mike leaves, Joshua is bitten by an escaped Tarantula and is driven into a frenzy and falls on a group of glass spider cages. He is soon wrapped and eaten, and the spiders make their home in his store, growing larger and larger before heading into his backyard.

Mike attempts to return but is stopped by his mother, Sheriff Sam Parker (Kari Wührer) and Deputy Pete pulling the toxic barrel out of the pond. Sam scolds Mike, reminding him that the spiders are dangerous and he shouldn't be seeing Joshua. Sam forces Mike to get in the car, but Sam is adament to stop a group of motorcyclists who are speeding, forcing her to give them a ticket. Sam's daughter Ashley (Scarlett Johansson) is riding on the back seat of one of the motorcycles with her boyfriend Bret, who is the mayor's stepson. Bret's given a ticket and Ashley is subsequently driven home by her mother and teased by Mike.

Wade, the Mayor of Prosperity, is holding a town meeting in the mall (which is ironically placed, seeing as few people live in the town) about whether they should sell the mines and relocate. Chris McCormick, whose father owned the mines before he died ten years ago, shows up after being gone and stands against Wade's proposition. Chris also sparks a romance with Sam.

Mike sneaks out on foot and finds Joshua and the spiders missing, although he sees an enormous spider shadow in the mines and tells Chris that the spiders have grown to enormous sizes, based on a giant spider leg he found at the mine entrance, as well as Joshua's web-laden boot. Chris is understandably skeptical despite the evidence. Meanwhile the mines have reopened with the miners searching for a famous gold load, dismissed by many as a myth seeing as the witness of this gold was a dying man, McCormick's father. They are soon consumed by the orb weaver family, who have made the mines their home. Seeing as the entire town is connected in some way to the mines, Spiders show up in many different places. Pete's cat is eaten by a growing specimen, some ostriches from Wade's private ostrich farm are eaten by large trapdoor spiders, and Chris' skepticism is overcome when his Aunt Gladys and her dog are abducted by a male orb weaver in her basement. He also finds an even bigger leg. Ashley breaks up with Bret, who soon after witnesses his entire motorcycle gang being attacked and killed by jumping spiders, with himself surviving after fleeing into the mines. Sheriff Sam Parker is also skeptical, and is convinced Chris and Mike are delusional. However, her skepticism fades when she witnesses a giant spider attempting to abduct Ashley in her room. The spider is shot, but the threat enlarges as Mike concludes that the spiders come out at night to feed, and the whole town is in danger.

Sam contacts Pete and tells him to bring all the guns in the police station's possession and, after a scuffle with some jumping spiders, they travel to the trailer of an eccentric UFO enthusiast named Harlan (Doug E. Doug), knowing he has a radio station that he operates from within his trailer. As Sam broadcasts the threat over the radio as Harlan stands by in disbelief, a giant Tarantula assaults the trailer. As the town listens to the broadcast, they at first scoff because of Harlan's reputation, but soon hear the screams of the people within the trailer as the tarantula overturns it. They escape as the arachnid struggles to its eight feet. As the town is assaulted by vicious spiders, Sam tells everybody to get to the mall (concrete walls and steel doors), but half the town is cornered and killed. The mayor seems happy that everyone is coming to his mall, but this joy is replaced with terror once he learns the reason. The main characters make it in safely, and the children are told to go down to the basement as the able-bodied townsfolk hold off the spiders. Wade sneaks into the mines and encounters Bret before being abducted by orb weavers. Meanwhile, Harlan and Chris climb onto the roof and ascend the radio mast and try to get a signal to call the police, but are believed to be pranksters and are forced to fend for themselves. Harlan jumps from the roof after the spiders enter the mall and lands in some bushes, where he meets up with Pete and the two run from spiders as Chris meets up with Sam Parker and goes down to the basement with the remaining townsfolk. Ashley is reunited with Bret, who finds Wade and frees him. The group make it out of the mines, but Chris stays behind to look for his Aunt Gladys, but not before he expresses his love for Sam. He finds Gladys and the gold his father was searching for, but is confronted by the massive Consuela. He uses Brad's motorcycle to escape, and blows up the spiders and the mines utilizing Gladys' smoking addiction and the high concentrations of methane gas. The police finally arrive (brought by Pete and Harlan) after the danger has subsided, and had not believed the stories of the spiders, but had believed Harlan's alternate story of invading aliens.

As the story ends, Harlan is heard making a radio report in which he is concluding the story about the spiders and the aftermath. He concludes that the town has decided to cover up the whole incident, but have let Harlan continue broadcasting the incident, knowing nobody will believe him. He also mentions Chris reopening the gold mines and putting everyone back to work, but tells us "that is another story altogether." As the camera pans in on his mouth, it is clear that he now has gold teeth.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Spiders

[edit] Title

The film was originally titled 'Arach Attack' or 'Arac Attack' (under which it was released in Europe and other countries around the world) but the similarity to 'Iraq Attack' made the title seem inappropriate near the start of the Iraq War. In contrast, a joke in a commercial for 1990 spider movie Arachnophobia, which premiered during the buildup to the first Gulf War, showed a gentleman at a screening mispronouncing the name of the movie as 'Iraqiphobia'.

The title 'Eight Legged Freaks' is a line that Arquette ad-libbed in the movie.

[edit] Inspiration

Director Ellory Elkayem got the idea from his 1997 short film 'Larger than Life', which also handled a spider-fighting storyline. It is not based on or initially inspired by H.G. Wells' short story The Valley of Spiders.

[edit] Location

  • The town of Prosperity does not exist in Arizona, although Arizona obviously does. The scenes inside Prosperity Mall were actually shot in an abandoned mall in Glendale, Arizona. The location was formerly Valley West Mall and also known as Manistee Mall. This movie would be the last operation that took place in the mall, as it was demolished soon after shooting was completed.
  • The scenes in Aunt Gladys' house in the kitchen and in Gladys' basement were filmed at the Manistee Ranch in Glendale, Arizona.

[edit] External links